Waynesboro Tourism Virtual Tour - Bringing Landscapes To Life With Sound Design

The Waynesboro office of Tourism and Economic Development in Virginia was participating in a online press event put on by the VTC (Virginia Tourism Commission) to give travel writers and media a virtual experience in various locations throughout the state since most tourism offices are not offering formal press trips this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When they reached out, they had a limited time-frame, spring hasn’t fully arrived so filming outdoors was going to be tricky given the trees were still bare in many areas, and the goal was to give viewers a sense of what it’s like to actually drive to visit these areas without actually being able to do so. In a nutshell, we were filming a series of very specific outdoor centered b-roll when it was still less than ideal to film outdoors.

To achieve this, our team almost exclusive looked to scheduling our shoot around the “golden hours” of the day, sunrise to early morning light, then evening to sunset. It’s amazing how much bleakness you can hide when some amazing light to fill the voids of bare trees and budding shrubs.

As we like to do on any project we have the opportunity to be hired to work on, we wanted to really take the virtual tour experience to the next leave and make each video as immersive as possible. Capturing compelling footage does take some expertise, but to make it really come alive so it stands on its own takes a bit more creativity.

To accomplish this goal, A: we chose a soundtrack that really carried a inviting vibe, then B: we captured actual audio and sounds from the places we were filming at, then panned and EQ’d the audio to really create an immersive, audio and visual experience. This video is best experienced with a nice pair of headphones or studio speakers. This was incredibly satisfying to see it all come together so nicely and know our client got more than expected.

PROJECT TEAM

Director/Cinematographer: .........… Angel David Verde
Project Manager:………Jennifer Callison, Tourism Director, Waynesboro VA
Editor, Sound Design, Color:………… Angel David Verde
Production Assistant: ……………..…….…. Mary McComas

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Waynesboro Virtual Tour - Directors Cut

Visit Waynesboro used two videos that took viewers on two separate trips either to the Blue Ridge Tunnel or along the Blue Ridge Parkway. We decided to make a directors cut that merged these two videos together into one seamless visual experience. Enjoy!

The South River Science Team - South River Currents Video Series

After several years of working on projects exclusively outside of Virginia, far far away from our home office in Staunton, VA, we were contacted to help develop, film, and delver a amazing series of videos for The South River Science Team in Waynesboro Virginia and the communities along the South River.

The project is incredibly unique n nature as it’s both meant to provide entertainment and educate the viewer of the complexity of a incident that caused the accidental depositing of mercury into the South River and also share the stories and history of the people, communities, and region that is all connected to the South River through it’s watershed. The South River Science team’s main goal is outreach. The most exciting part to us is this project is now on going with at minimum a handful of videos being commissioned for their channels.

Our team really dug in deep spending about 2 months total on creative development, working side by side the project manager to find the right tone of the main series of videos. With this, we cast a amazing host to be the face of the series, added clever animations with a vintage feel, and are very simple yet fun practical puppetry based animation for the series “co-host” Southy the Mouthy South River Fish. Basically, a wonderful mid-century science illustration of a Rainbow trout. The tone of the videos were to be something appealing to both a younger audience and adults at the same time without pigeon holing the series into one age bracket or the other.

These very watchable, upbeat, info rich short form videos are complemented with shorter vignettes featuring a single interviewee speaking on a single topics of expertise that have a bit more of a sophisticated tone and delivery. They are expanding the areas of interest and topics covered that can still have a place for outreach, education, used in the classroom, at seminars, or other places that members of the South River Science team, their stakeholders, community members, and others can find use and benefit from having these in the public domain.

PROJECT TEAM

Director/Cinematographer: .........… Angel David Verde
Project Manager:………………………… David Hirschman, South River Science Team
Writer/Science Advisor:……………… David Hirschman
Drone Operator:………………………….. Max Quillen, Angel David Verde
Editor, Sound Design, Color:………. Angel David Verde
Animation/Motion Graphics: ……… Angel David Verde
Production Assistants/Grip: ……….. Courtney Campbell, Ian Berry, Zac Laliberte
Series Host: ........…….……..…………….. Leighton Brown Bryan (Episode 1 - 3)

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Table Of Contents

• Primary South River Currents Video Series with host

• South River Current Vignettes

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South River Currents Video Series

Leighton Brown Brian, along side her “co-host,” Southy the Mouthy South River Fish, are the stars of this upbeat, clever, and fun, info-rich video series that used on location footage, expert interviews, along side simple animations and stick puppetry to enlighten, delight, and education the viewers about various topics that relate to the South River and the South River Watershed.

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South River Current Vignettes

The vignettes (aka, short films/features) are more story driven featuring interviews of locals, stakeholders, and experts who live and work along the South River. These videos carry a bit more of a sophisticated tone and delivery however still meet the South River Science Team’ goal to use video as community outreach and engagement for education, the classroom, at seminars, or other places that community members find use from.